Random Pics

My last post was random pics by amateur photographer Hamilton. This post contains ones by his mom (also an amateur).

Some days I just think my boys dress awesome. It might seem egotistical since I'm the one that dresses them, but once they're in the clothes, it mostly feels like it was their choice and they are the ones that have to pull it off. I love Beckett's Puma jacket (actually got into a fight with Alex when I thought he'd ruined it) and his little Vans. All coming together, of course, with the best accessory: big blue eyes! Not a great photo of him though...way cuter in real life. :)

The boys were watching Mickey Mouse together (for the record, Beckett rarely watches TV), and I thought their little bums were adorable.


A colleague of Alex's gave us this cardboard rocket ship. So, so cool. Sad that the company that makes these and other similar items is out of business. We had a lot of fun in there (except for the 2 occasions it was used as an accidental outhouse).

Muscles! Hamilton wants to wear this shirt whenever he sees it. I'm continually amazed by how soon little boys are in fact little BOYS.
One day during lunch, Hamilton got trapped in his chair. Loving mother that I am, I took a few pictures first. I thought it was pretty funny and a good lesson, of course, about how you're supposed to eat and not play around.

Cheeseburger! Beckett is no longer accepting bite-sized food. He wants the real thing, the whole thing. Today he wouldn't eat pulled pork until it was in a bun with coleslaw.

Hamilton: A Photographer

We recently got a smaller camera...so I don't have to have our big, expensive one out and about. Hamilton discovered this camera the other day and has been enjoying doing some photography. Here are some of his shots.

This is one of me, taken with his direction, "Be angry!"


There are lots of feet/floor photos...
Bird's eye view of dinner...
A puzzle we did earlier in the day...
Took this picture right before he took the car away from Beckett...
Self-portraits in the bathroom mirror...
The camera is why I'm actually able to fold some laundry...yea!
Of course, Hamilton still tries to destroy my laundry piles (why?!?), so this is a picture of me saying, "Please! Don't mess up the clothes!"
Pretty sure Hamilton gets this view a lot...
This picture might be the result of his "jump zoom" shots (his term)...where he jump spins and then takes a picture when he lands. Already a visionary in the world of photography.
Hamilton took several shots of this toy before deciding that having the animals OUT was the better shot...

And the picture he'd been wanting to take since the beginning of his photo shoot: Daddy!

Beckett is ONE YEAR old!

My baby is a big boy now! Oh, not really. The second one teaches you that 12 months is still so little. I remember thinking that Hamilton was soooo grown-up when he turned one. I'm glad to discover that I get to keep my "baby" a little longer. We haven't had his official one-year check-up yet, so I'll have to add his stats later. And I haven't gotten his official one-year portrait either, so yet another add-on. But I didn't want to let more time pass before posting about the big birthday.

The Boy

• He's getting a little picky and tossing things off the side of his high chair, but mostly he's still a good eater. He likes cole slaw, for example. I don't know why, but I think this is hilarious.
• He isn't crawling, but he is pretty good at pivoting around and rolling where he wants to go. He IS getting frustrated about NOT crawling though. Hopefully, that will help.
• He LOVES to stand. He gets especially tickled when he takes his hands off whatever was supporting him. We're all impressed Cutie :).
• He rarely gets the opportunity thanks to his over-involved big brother, but Beckett can sit and play or look at books for the longest time. I love watching him do this.
• He's been pretty funny at bathtime, wanting to do whatever Hamilton is doing. Hamilton got some scuba diver figures for Christmas, and Beckett was so determined to get one for himself. These are like "army men" style, so nothing too exciting, but if his big brother was playing with it, he wanted to as well.
• He's really finding his voice. And by "finding his voice," I mean he yells a lot. I guess this is what happens when you spend your first year with Hamilton and me.
• He is great at going to my gym's daycare, but once I come back, he's had enough and cries if I go out of sight. Kind of love this.
• Even with the yelling, he's still a sweetheart and we all adore him.
  

The Day

I had LASIK the day before (nice selfish planning, Mom), so we kept the day pretty low-key. While not at all exciting for us, Beckett got spoiled with napping on his own terms for a change (no pushing through errands, sleeping in the car seat, etc.). Karen, Adam, and Wesley came over for dinner and dessert to celebrate with us. Alex made the grown-ups steak with blue cheese butter, asparagus, salad, and garlic bread. Yum. I don't even remember what the boys ate for dinner! I'm terrible...

Of course, the big eating event wasn't dinner, it was dessert. I made vanilla cupcakes (recipe courtesy of Heidi) with chocolate frosting (pre-made...this is a big "no-no" for me, but Alex was wanting to be helpful---and he was).

Hamilton just poked at the mini 3-layer cake I made for him, so I was curious to see how my big eater would handle his first taste of dessert...

He dipped his fingers in the frosting a couple times...




And then went nuts, going in with both hands, making crazed grunting sounds, and ending with a dramatic, intense squeeze of the cupcake itself followed by his tossing it on the floor. So much for homemade over store bought, huh?


We also had party hats and a special onesie.


And presents, of course...most of which Hamilton has kindly offered to share with him.


Below is a short retrospective on Beckett's full first year. The music is the same song I always heard for my birthday. I obviously had a very cool dad.

Perspective

This may sound hypocritical/bipolar/whatever after my loving "potty training" posts, but Hamilton is driving me nuts. Too much energy, too few naps (although some...thank you Tootsie Roll bribes), too many glass shattering screams, way too much attention to Beckett, too little sleep for me, and so on. I keep expecting this intensity to die down, as ups and downs of parenting do, but it seems were stuck in "flow" with nary a glimpse at "ebb." My temper is getting shorter and my desire to chuck him out the window growing. Not a great place. However (and, luckily, there is usually...eventually...a "however" in the trenches of motherhood), I had a couple moments today that helped me see the bigger picture.

The Post Office

Really? A positive experience at the post office? Well, Hamilton was crazy, naturally. Running around, pulling out mailing supplies, and enjoying the possibilities a wall of greeting cards offers. Luckily, there were only a couple other people in there, and they happened to be mom veterans. So, rather than looking shocked and judgemental, they had knowing smiles. The woman in front of us kind of laughed, remembering "those days." Her son is now driving himself to swim practice. The other woman, a grandmother now, assured me that Hamilton and Beckett will be buds one day...it would seem like it happened magically over night. She also offered a "good for you" for electing to be a mom at all, not like many people who don't want to consider kids until their 40s. Sidenote: I especially liked that bit because it made me think she thought I was younger than I actually am.

A needed reminder that kids are actually pretty funny and do eventually grow up and that being a mom is worthwhile.

Car Conversations

A woman in the ward has been in the hospital the last couple days with her two and half year old son. They came home today, and I was bringing them dinner.

Hamilton: Where are we going?
Me: We have to go to the store, grab something from the house, and then take someone dinner.
Hamilton (crying): I just want to go to Hamilton's house!
Me: Well, a little boy in our ward has been sick, and I want to do something nice for him and his family.
Hamilton (concerned): Is it Kieran? Is Stockton sick?
Me: No, no. They're ok. The little boy's name is Hunter.
Hamilton: Oh.

After dropping dinner off, I get back into the car...

Hamilton: Does Hunter feel better now?
Me (heart squeezing): Yeah, I think that made his family feel a little better.
Hamilton: Is his family sick too?
Me: No, but sometimes when little kids are sick, mommies and daddies get tired and sad too.
Hamilton: How do kids get sick?
Me: [some germ talk tied into encouraging all the hand washing we're doing lately]
Hamilton: [begins a complicated "germ tale" from his past]

It's so easy to forget he's a little person when he's pushing every button I have. Conversations like this not only remind me of that, but also show me how much that mind of his is thinking and growing.

Love him.

Beckett is ELEVEN months!

His eleventh month was full of lots of excitement with the Christmas holidays...good and bad excitement.

• While staying the night at a hotel in St. George, a nasty ear infection flared up and kept him awake and crying from about 12:30 to 4am. After Alex and I each took him for a drive, we decided it was ER time. Luckily, it was a quick trip, and we were back by 6am, Beckett with a nice dose of sleep-inducing pain medicine inside him. We all slept in until 10am. Thank you thick hotel curtains!
• Beckett met my Grandpa and Grandma Faylor for the first time.
  
• Beckett did awesome in the car, sleeping when he needed to and being content to play with toys or watch Hamilton when he was awake. It was only the last hour of our trip back that I had to crawl in the back to keep him happy.
• After an observation from my dad's wife, I started noticing how content Becks is to sit and play. Hamilton wasn't like that at all...I appreciate it in Beckett.
• He's starting to wrap his arms around my neck more. Melts my heart every time.
• Overly obsessed with my glasses, taking them off to be more specific.
• He's exhibiting a shorter fuse with Hamilton. He's still very forgiving and patient, but "yells" at Hamilton more and cries sooner than usual. Absolutely cannot blame him for this development.
• He scoots on his tummy backwards well. We've heard him fussing, only to discover he's pushed himself halfway under the couch. Poor thing. :)
• No crawling, no cruising, no standing while holding onto anything other than me. I'm trying to focus on being grateful for his little mobility, rather than worried about his development and, honestly, what other people think about him.

We did some rearranging to accommodate the Christmas tree, which led to a permanent chair cover/chair location change, so our photo shoot location is different. The boys are in some Jana Anderson pjs I got for a steal from Costco. I'm SUCH a sucker for jammies.

A pretty accurate photographic representation of the boys' personalities. Hamilton is being nuts, and Beckett is seeming to say, "Dude, chill. Mommy's trying to take our picture."


Is he so squeezable or what??


I love you little guy!

A Final Word on Potty Training

The potty training method I used was "3 days," so I'm satisfied with journaling those three days and not chronicling the longer "refinement" stage of potty training. We have had several accident-free ventures away from home, so I'm hopeful things are progressing well. Of course, I mostly have the sense that we've just been lucky. Maybe in a year I won't leave the house paranoid and steeled for disaster.

I can't close the blogging chapter on the subject, though, without sharing an amusing practice of Hamilton....

After he says, "I'm done," I ask, "Are you sure? Listen to your body. Is your peanut done?" Then Hamilton poses the question to his peanut, which then responds in a high-pitched voice, "Yes, sir. I'm done." It also thanks me for handing him any tissue and apologizes if any mess is created. Kind of goes against what you'd expect from a peanut personality...hope it's maintained through his teenage years.

Potty Training: Day 3

Well, today I figured out why "three days" is the magic number. It's because by the end of the third day, everyone is stir crazy and ready to get out and about again! This is actually important because it means you are willing to deal with "off site" accidents in order to escape home for a bit. All the "touchy feely" mommy stuff I've been feeling about spending so much time with Hamilton still exists...it just needs to breathe outside and watch his energy get expended not at Beckett's or my expense.

Highlights

• The particular potty training method I chose requires underwear all the time...even nights. First night: wet the bed (but didn't wake up). Second night: dry underwear! I'm not thinking this is a for sure thing every time, but at least I know it's possible.
• No accidents until noon.
  
• Had our first "fight" about going to the bathroom. I could tell he could go, but he refused, as he was totally focused on getting a mint. Promised him one if he went potty. Not supposed to bribe directly, but it was turning into a battle of wills, which Hamilton and I need NOT engage in.
• 1 bigger accident; 1 small accident.
• He's starting to repeat my constant "Don't forget to tell me if you need to go peepee or poopoo in the potty." And it's turning into an increasingly difficult tongue twister for me.
• Had the inevitable "do you have a peanut?" discussion. That happened in the morning, but it was one of the first things Hamilton talked to Alex about when he came home.

Lessons Learned

I realize, of course, that "potty training" isn't really over, but I'm proud of how far we've come. I'm really proud of myself for sticking to a program, especially one that goes against the normal routine of me and the boys. I hope it turns out to be the right move.

I thought today that it's been kind of nice having half as many diapers to change. Thinking also that I'll be saving some significant cash each month.

I am going to have to really plan ahead and schedule errands/activities to increase the odds of accident-free ventures. I'm kind of nervous about what to do with Beckett when H has to go to the bathroom. Luckily, he's still in his portable car seat (but that only lasts the next month). Well, I had very little idea of what to do with a newborn baby, and Hamilton has made it to 3, so I guess I'll figure it out.

Think happy thoughts of dry underwear and clean bathrooms for us.